Petra Poláková

The central character of the romantic comedy Casting for Love is Stela Nebeská, an unsuccessful actress who, approaching forty, realizes that she is unlikely to make it big. She loses her job at the theater, where she only played minor roles anyway. Her career failure is followed by personal failure - her husband starts cheating on her and doesn't even try to hide it. But Stela is not willing to accept defeat and is determined not to give up without a fight. She vows that, come what may, she will find someone who will make her husband green with envy. So she launches a grand audition for a new love. She starts dating, but every date is with an eccentric and unsuitable suitor, and every date ends in disaster. Will Stela finally find the right one? Or have all the decent men died out?

In the story of two generations searching for a fixed point in their lives, the film offers a reflection on the possibilities of escaping the reality of place, time and human responsibility. In a narrative between fiction and documentary, the past and the present are intertwined, and events both lived and written. The film takes advantage of the atmosphere of Ústí nad Labem and the unique possibilities of the Drama Studio of that time. It is linked to the theatre by the actor Jiří Schmitzer, who was a member of the ensemble for ten years, as well as the actress Jitka Prosperi and Miroslav Bambušek, who was a guest director and author there. However, the actors who also appeared on the stage of the Drama Studio were Čerčil's representative - former stage technician Zdeněk Novák, former wardrobe mistress Petra Poláková and inspector Ester Hocke.